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Booktubeathon: Update 8 [Final!] & Mini-Review

JUST FINISHED: In Real Life by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang.

A cute but thought-provoking graphic novel about Anda, a gamer who gets caught between two very different online friends: Lucy, who likes to spend her in-game time hunting illegal gold farmers (people who sell in-game products for real world money), and Raymond, a poor Chinese boy who farms gold for a living.

This story touches on a lot of interesting topics, and the ethics of gaming for real-world money is certainly not something I’d ever expect to find brought up in a graphic novel… Personally, though, I think that both sides of the debate in this story are equally wrong: It’s just as bad to be paid real money to kill gold farmers as it is to be a gold farmer in the first place…

For me, the main appeal of this book was in MMORPG setting, which I adored, and Jen Wang’s art style really emphasised the difference between the two worlds, particularly in her use of colour – mostly shades of brown and red for the real world scenes, compared to a whole host of colours in the different areas of the game. The characters were great, too, and I really loved the way that Anda and Raymond’s friendship developed. They were super-cute~ ❤